From bell ringing to fireworks, gongs to cannon salutes, a dazzling
variety of sounds and soundscapes marked the China encountered by the
West around 1800. These sounds were gathered by diplomats, trade
officials, missionaries, and other travelers and transmitted back to
Europe, where they were reconstructed in the imaginations of writers,
philosophers, and music historians such as Jean-Philippe Rameau, Johann
Nikolaus Forkel, and Charles Burney. Thomas Irvine gathers these stories
in Listening to China, exploring how the sonic encounter with China
shaped perceptions of Europe's own musical development.
Through these stories, Irvine not only investigates how the Sino-Western
encounter sounded, but also traces the West's shifting response to
China. As the trading relationships between China and the West broke
down, travelers and music theorists abandoned the vision of shared
musical approaches, focusing instead on China's noisiness and sonic
disorder and finding less to like in its music. At the same time, Irvine
reconsiders the idea of a specifically Western music history, revealing
that it was comparison with China, the great "other," that helped this
idea emerge. Ultimately, Irvine draws attention to the ways Western ears
were implicated in the colonial and imperial project in China, as well
as to China's importance to the construction of musical knowledge during
and after the European Enlightenment. Timely and original, Listening to
China is a must-read for music scholars and historians of China alike.
